Posted by Anne

Does anyone else find that travel isn’t inherently relaxing?  You plan a vacation because you’re in need of a break.  And then in your efforts to be a good tourist and “see the sights”, you come home having had fun certainly, but not particularly relaxed?  This happens to me a fair bit, which is why I decided to approach my recent weekend getaway entirely differently. 

While it wasn’t exactly on par with Elizabeth’s farmstay in Slovenia, it accomplished what I needed, which was an escape.  I needed an escape from a lot of things—from planning, work, and planning for work.  And so the last thing I wanted was to plan the vacation.  I wanted to avoid the entire experience of being a tourist.  I wanted to simply slide into another community and achieve a complete sense of anonymity. 

I’ve actually been inspired to take this approach since our trip to Chile over the winter. As we plowed our way through Patagonia, I noticed something.  Namely, the same people.  Over and over again.  At first, it was sort of pleasant to notice the same faces a couple days in a row.  But it started to feel strange—over a 2 week span of time, we saw the same two couples three separate times.  At restaurants, in hotels, and on buses.  It was as if we were on a guided tour, and nobody had bothered to tell us. And it was easy to identify the culprit…we were all using the exact same guide book. 

Ironically, the guidebook my fellow travelers were using was The Lonely Planet.  Yep, that series of guide books which began as an effort to publicize lesser-known hotels, eateries, and attractions has apparently become the travel bible for adventurous young people across the world.  And so we made our way across Chile, believing ourselves to be alone, and then nodding politely at the same 4 Swiss tourists we saw off and on for 2 weeks.  Our planet?  Not so lonely. 

Which brings me back to this past weekend.  We wanted something different.  More relaxing, and more removed from the traditional tourist experience.  So we took off, sans guide book, and outside the high tourist season.  We also chose to travel to a town where we’ve already been.  A place where we could escape into the flow of another scene.   

All weekend, we found ourselves surrounded by locals.  There were tourists too, of course, but just as many (or more) locals, going about their business.  They surrounded us in coffee shops and galleries.  They passed us with their dogs on the walking trail on the pier.  They smiled, and moved on.  We did see the same faces multiple times, but they were the faces who live there. 

Our funky hotel lobby, with its adjoining coffee shop.

The weekend culminated in an impromptu invitation from our hotel to attend the “grand opening party” of the coffee shop next door.  Normally, I’d avoid this kind of gathering—opting instead for the safe predictability of my tourist identity at a restaurant listed in my guide book.  But we decided to go.  We ate (free) appetizers and drank (free) beverages, and listened to a (free) Irish folk band.  We chatted with some locals, and spent some time to ourselves.  At the party, we saw the same brewery-worker who’d served us a pint earlier in the evening, and bumped into the same shopkeeper who’d sold me a sweater that afternoon.   In short, we achieved exactly what I wanted, which was the opportunity to slide into another community—another life—for just a couple short days.

I never used to think it was possible to achieve the feeling of true “escape” for a mere weekend getaway.  But when you travel somewhere real…where the location has a purpose beyond catering to tourists, you can find something very removed from your day-to-day stressors. 

I re-wrote my image of a vacation.  And it worked.

How do you achieve “escape” when you’re on vacation?  Do you enjoy being a tourist or do you like to blend into the local scene?